Map (Ballardian dwellings)

What then if you were to decide to take up the challenge mockingly mumbled by the legend of any given city map? To spit in the red-dotted face of the ‘You Are Here’ - a highly presumptuous assertion by any measure?

One would, for starters, have to reach an unsettling level of acquaintance with the specks of bird shit on the map, getting familiar with their every curve and line, taking in each and every tone of yellowish brown. Fingerprints would no longer resonate the presence of passers-by trying to cope with the gaps between map, surroundings and self through the futile act of pointing - groping, really. They would become urban forces to be reckoned with: roads, street corners, buildings, all with a logic of their own.

The deictic and the referential would be reduced to mere memory. As would the real behind the map. One would eventually coincide with the Real of the map. He would literally find himself there. And truly become one.

The above-mentioned movement has severe dietary repercussions. Yielding to ‘You Are Here’ can not but end in an autophagous exercise.